The major US television networks and Hollywood studios are to take their places again today in a Los Angeles courtroom, hoping to battle Silicon Valley technology they contend is a dire threat to their existence.
The offending tool: a digital video recorder. Introduced in 1999, digital video recorders are, depending on who is doing the talking, either at the cutting edge of home entertainment or a sophisticated pirating device that could destroy the entertainment industry.
Tivo and Replay are currently the only DVR systems on the market. In size and shape they resemble standard videocassete records, but inside they are quite a different animal. The DVRs contain large, fast hard drives, which constantly record what a viewer is watching. Built-in software lets users watch television shows as they are being recorded, affording them the ability to fast-forward through commercials.
Replay, manufactured by SonicBlue of Santa Clara, California, is also able to "quick skip," in 30-second increments, past commercials in recorded shows, and is also able to detect a commercial break and automatically roll through it.
The world's leading entertainment companies will try to convince a federal judge to "quick skip" over allowing Replay 4000 to remain on the market. The corporations behind US networks ABC, NBC and CBS filed a lawsuit in protest over the new generation recorders' ability to record and send television shows over email, claiming such technology is wholesale copyright infringement and digital piracy.
The lawsuit also protests Replay's ability to skip commercials -- a major selling point of the product in general but the bane of the existence of a television network dependent on advertising revenues to even broadcast the shows in the first place.
According to court filings, the entertainment industry calls that feature an attack on "the fundamental economic underpinnings of free television and basic nonbroadcast services."
"It's theft," Turner Broadcasting chief executive Jamie Kellner said during an April interview with entertainment industry magazine Cable World. "Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise, you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis."
Kellner has reason to be afraid.
Memphis-based tech consultancy NextResearch recently published a survey showing that 95 percent of people who record television programs skip the commercials that pepper them. And though the DVR market has been miniscule, with about 2.8 million users by the end of this year, its expected to boom to 28.7 million users by 2008, a significant chunk of the television viewing audience.
"Once you have enabling technology that is embraced by consumers, you can't go back," said Fred Von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for the rights of consumers in technology disputes.
"We've been using VCRs for this purpose for almost 20 years. It's just the industry's way of delaying the inevitable."
A middle ground seems to be appearing in the dispute, as cable television operators and television set manufacturers are making their newest products DVR-capable. Major electronics retailers such as Best Buy, are experimenting with linking access to programming through commercials.
"These devices are going to transform the television advertising model," said Sean Badding, an analyst with the California-based Carmel Group consultancy, which has been tracking the DVR trend.
"Eventually, the studios and networks will figure out how to make it work for them."
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